Hi Patrick....you are right about the CW calling freq....I don't think
one exists now. I would suggest that 144.200 is about the closest
thing.....at least in our area. ASIDE: Please hold the flames to one
per week on this topic. There may be established CW calling
frequencies in other areas that I am just not aware of.
Did you use a chat room for coordination? That really helps a lot. I
don't know where the Sprint ops might hang out, but during the big
contests I use PingJockey for meteor scatter and that increases the
QSOs a lot. I don't know where the FT8 ops hang out now as far as a
chat page. They may just all hang out on 144.174.
Congratulations on the fine Sprint showing.
73 Marshall K5QE
Quoting Patrick Thomas <p-thomas@mindspring.com>:
I know I'm a just a blip on the radar for VHF contests but since you
asked....
I had the best 2m sprint I've ever had, here in EN82 - sorry to say
but it was mostly due to FT8. Reached the usual handful of locals
on CW/SSB, and then figured "what the heck, I'll see who's on
digital" and there were probably 10-15 people constantly going at it
there all sprint long. So kudos to them for being on.
Mostly I figure the advantage is not as much about FT8 itself (as I
could clearly hear most of the traffic by ear) but more that FT8
basically forces you into using one particular frequency. I learned
that the CW calling frequency was 144.100 back in the day but have
never once heard anyone calling there during a contest... so instead
I have to manually scan 250kHz of bandwidth, over 360 degrees... so
what is that, 90 million bandwidth-degrees? :) Okay, I guess only 8
beam positions when I'm looking for randoms or calling CQ, but still
you get the point. Yeah, there are spotting sites, but again
there's multiple sites, and they are national so the s:n ratio is
not always optimal for us small guys.
My home QTH is notoriously poor for VHF (antenna is about 30ft below
average terrain) but nevertheless I was able to get someone 350+
miles to my southeast, and another ~350 miles to my north... which
for me is really good! Proof that it comes down to participation
more than anything else.
Thanks to everyone who was on!
Patrick
KB8DGC
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